Many services exist for planning a route using a transit system. Typically, a user inputs a departure and/or arrival time as well as origin and destination locations to the transit planning service. The transit planning service can then use the user inputs and transit schedules to suggest one or more transit options that can get the user from the origin to the destination at the prescribed departure and/or arrival time. The transit planning services can plan transit trips involving multiple modes of transportation, including railway transportation, buses, ferries, etc.
In some situations, a user may not be interested in obtaining a transit trip for a particular departure and/or arrival time. Rather, the user is interested in time independent transit routes that represent typically good trips between the origin and destination over the course of a time interval, such as during business hours. These time independent routes or “guidebook” routes may be analogous to a typical or usual route one might take from the origin to the destination, such as a route that one might find in a guidebook or a tourist brochure.
Many different time independent transit routes may be available between the origin and the destination. The time independent transit routes can have many different characteristics. For instance, one time independent transit route can have shorter duration but can be less frequent. Another time independent transit route can be more frequent, but can have a longer duration. It can be difficult to compare these different time independent transit routes to determine which time independent transit routes to recommend to a user.